CLOTHES seemingly destined for the scrapheap could instead be turned into something beautiful on the catwalk of London Fashion Week.

Zero Waste Dunbar, which has been tasked with ensuring Dunbar is Scotland’s first waste-free town, has launched a national initiative alongside a leading fashion school to reduce the amount of discarded clothing and its impact on the environment.

Love Your Clothes aims to divert textile waste from landfill and, with the involvement of Jacqui Burke Fashion School, produce cutting-edge garments to appear on the catwalk next year in an effort to raise awareness of the potential to upcycle old clothing.

Zero Waste Dunbar has already launched several initiatives within the town and works with the local community to reduce waste to landfill and maximise the benefits of re-use and recycling.

The Love Your Clothes project aims to inspire people to buy clothes to last and to think twice about throwing away old or ill-fitting garments.

In addition to founding and running Jacqui Burke Fashion School in Dunbar, Jacqui has produced collections shown worldwide, at Paris Sur Mode at The Louvre, Fashion Week Munich, London Fashion Week, and Clothes Show Live.

Her eponymous label has also sold to top international buyers including L’Est Rose in Tokyo and Untitled in New York, as well as top UK fashion retailers such as Joseph, Selfridges, Richard Creme, and Edinburgh brand Corniche.

Jacqui told the Courier she had always been very conscious of where she sourced her fabric and many of her garments featured recycled material.

She said: “The design of clothing is as important as the ethos behind it.

“The more desirable the piece of clothing, the better.

“Working with recycled materials and discarded garments, reinvigorating them with new life and value, is so very rewarding.

“However, sourcing these items is a very expensive exercise. We are lucky to have Zero Waste Dunbar and together we have a great opportunity, as part of Love Your Clothes, to divert textile waste from landfill and put in place an infrastructure to reuse a very valuable and much-needed resource.”

In the UK, garments have an estimated lifespan of just two years and three months.

Research by Zero Waste Scotland shows the average Scottish household owns about £4,000 worth of clothes, but wears only 70 per cent of that each year, most commonly because it no longer fits. It is estimated that 350,000 tonnes of used clothes – worth about £140 million – go to landfill each year.

Sue Guy, of Zero Waste Dunbar, described the Love Your Clothes project as a great opportunity to further establish the East Lothian town as a pioneer in reducing waste.

She said: “By diverting textile waste from landfill, we have a great opportunity locally to lead the way by putting an infrastructure in place from which we can manufacture new materials from old.”

“The area of recycling and upcycling is a rich and growing source of innovative design in the fashion and accessories industries.”